As Portland’s back-and-forth over parking-free apartments reaches a fresh fever pitch — and council readies itself to discuss new mandatory parking minimums for bigger projects — this study [PDF] is making its way around the web.
It’s a look at what happened in downtown Los Angeles when the city eased up on parking requirements and it’s essential conclusion is something Portland’s known for decades—limiting mandatory parking policy spurs developers to provide more and varied housing. Part of the study:
If a land use regulation increases per-unit construction costs, it can lead developers to supply fewer units, reducing the overall supply of housing and increasing its price. But land use regulations can constrain the supply of housing in three additional ways as well: by making it difficult to build housing for certain types of people, in certain types of buildings, or in certain neighborhoods. A residential minimum parking requirement can do all three.
While LA has enjoyed boons with these policies—finding them useful in repopulating underused areas—the pendulum is swinging the other way here. City council appears ready to scale back [PDF] zoning laws, enacted around 2000, that free developers from mandatory parking if they meet certain requirements.
Anyway, read the study if you can’t get enough of this stuff.
Damn Vanderhart, you’re really sexin’ up blogtown.
This is the key line from the introduction:
“In places where land is scarce and expensive, however, and where many people can travel by non-auto modes, the distortion introduced by a minimum parking requirement might be large.”
“Places where land is scarce and expensive” applies to down town LA, and downtown Portland (and much of NW Portland), but it is not true at 40th and Division.
It is actually an interesting study, but it is talking about the true urban core and retrofitting historical buildings which take up a whole site. Not redevelopment outside of down town.
Blabby hit the sustainably-forged nail on the head.